New game engine helps developers create the highest-quality games,
build cloud-connected gameplay features, and build communities of fans
on Twitch; beta available for free download today

New AWS service, Amazon GameLift, lets game developers quickly scale
their session-based multiplayer games to support millions of players
with AWS’s highly available cloud infrastructure

February 09, 2016 03:01 AM Eastern Standard Time

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company (NASDAQ: AMZN),
today announced Amazon Lumberyard, a free, cross-platform, 3D game
engine for developers to create the highest-quality games, connect their
games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans
on Twitch. Amazon Lumberyard helps developers build beautiful worlds,
make realistic characters, and create stunning real-time effects. With
Amazon Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool, even non-technical game
developers can add cloud-connected features to a game in minutes (such
as a community news feed, daily gifts, or server-side combat resolution)
through a drag-and-drop graphical user interface.

AWS is also announcing Amazon GameLift, a new service for deploying,
operating, and scaling session-based multiplayer games. With Amazon
GameLift, Amazon Lumberyard developers can quickly scale
high-performance game servers up and down to meet player demand, without
any additional engineering effort or upfront costs.

Amazon Lumberyard is free, and available today in beta for developers
building PC and console games, with mobile and virtual reality (VR)
platforms coming soon. Amazon GameLift has a small per-player fee, plus
for both Amazon GameLift and Amazon Lumberyard, developers pay standard
AWS fees for AWS services used. To learn more about Amazon Lumberyard,
visit http://aws.amazon.com/lumberyard.
To learn more about Amazon GameLift, visit http://aws.amazon.com/gamelift.

Building technology capable of making the highest-quality games is
difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. Game developers either have to
spend several years creating the more than 20 significant technology
components that are needed to build the highest-quality games (such as
real-time graphics rendering, world and character editors, animation
systems, physics simulation, low-latency networking, particle systems,
scripting systems, terrain generation, and more), or they have to invest
in commercial game engines that are expensive and do not include native
integrations with Twitch or cloud back-end technologies (like AWS). And,
as live, multiplayer games have risen in popularity, game developers
have also had to invest thousands of hours to build and manage the
back-end infrastructure needed to connect their games to the cloud and
support high volumes of fluctuating player traffic. Amazon Lumberyard is
the only game engine that gives developers a combination of free,
feature-rich development technology, native integration with the AWS
Cloud to make it easier for developers to create live and multiplayer
online games, and native integration of Twitch features that help
developers connect their games to the world’s leading social video
platform and community for gamers. By starting game projects with Amazon
Lumberyard, developers are able to spend more of their time creating
differentiated gameplay and building communities of fans, and less time
on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building game engine components
and managing server infrastructure. And, with Amazon GameLift,
developers can be sure that on day one, their live, multiplayer games
can scale to support millions of players, while maintaining the high
performance gamers expect.

“Many of the world's most popular games are powered by AWS's technology
infrastructure platform," said Mike Frazzini, Vice President of Amazon
Games. “When we’ve talked to game developers, they've asked for a game
engine with the power and capability of leading commercial engines, but
that's significantly less expensive, and deeply integrated with AWS for
the back-end and Twitch for the gamer community. We're excited to
deliver that for our game developers today with the launch of Amazon
Lumberyard and Amazon GameLift."

Build live, online features in minutes—Live,online
games enjoy higher engagement and retention than offline games. Amazon
Lumberyard’s visual scripting tool, with its drag-and-drop graphical
user interface, makes it easy to build connected game features that
access AWS services, such as DynamoDB, Lambda, and S3. In minutes,
game designers can create features such as granting a daily gift or
sending in-game notifications without having to write a single line of
code. Amazon Lumberyard also comes integrated with AWS’s C++ SDK to
provide developers access to dozens of AWS services through native C++
code, the most common language used to make games.

Reach and engage fans on Twitch—Amazon Lumberyard is integrated
with Twitch so that developers can build gameplay features that engage
the more than 1.7 million monthly broadcasters, and more than 100
million monthly viewers on Twitch. With Amazon Lumberyard's Twitch
ChatPlay, developers can use a drag-and-drop visual scripting
interface to create gameplay features that let Twitch viewers use chat
to directly impact the game they are watching in real-time. For
example, with Twitch ChatPlay within Amazon Lumberyard, a developer
could build a game that lets viewers on Twitch control a character or
vote on game outcomes using chat commands like "up," "down," "live,"
or "die." And, the Twitch JoinIn feature within Amazon Lumberyard
helps developers build games that allow Twitch broadcasters to
instantly invite their live audiences to join them side-by-side in the
game, with a single click, while others continue to watch.

Amazon GameLift, a new managed service for deploying, operating, and
scaling session-based multiplayer games, reduces the time required to
create multiplayer back-ends from thousands of hours to just
minutes. With a few quick steps in the AWS Management Console,
developers can deploy game servers across the AWS Cloud, start
connecting players to games, and scale capacity up and down to meet
player demand. Developers can also identify operational issues using
Amazon GameLift’s real-time reporting of game server capacity and player
demand. With Amazon GameLift and Amazon Lumberyard, developers can
create multiplayer back-ends with less effort, technical risk, and time
delays that often cause developers to cut multiplayer features from
their games.

“Amazon has been a great partner and we are deeply excited about both
Amazon Lumberyard and Amazon GameLift,” said Josh Atkins, Vice President
of Creative Development, 2K Games. “The integration of a fantastic game
engine with amazing cloud services presents a wonderful opportunity for
both independent developers and established publishers.”

“Developing and maintaining a back-end infrastructure for multiplayer
games requires a lot of time, resources, and expertise that are beyond
the reach of many developers,” said Chris Jones, Chief Technology
Officer, Obsidian Entertainment. “Amazon GameLift removes much of that
burden from the developer, allowing them to focus their energy on
bringing their great game ideas to life.”

Pricing and Availability

Amazon Lumberyard is available for download in beta for PC and console
game developers. The Amazon Lumberyard engine is free to use, including
source. There are no seat fees, subscription fees, or requirements to
share revenue. Standard AWS fees apply should developers choose to use
other AWS services.

Amazon GameLift is available at launch in the AWS US East (N. Virginia)
and US West (Oregon) Regions, with additional Regions coming soon.
Amazon GameLift costs $1.50 per 1,000 Daily Active Users plus the
standard AWS fees for AWS services they consume.

About Amazon Web Services

For almost 10 years, Amazon Web Services has been the world’s most
comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. AWS offers over 50
fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, analytics,
mobile, Internet of Things (IoT) and enterprise applications from 32
Availability Zones (AZs) across 12 geographic regions in the U.S.,
Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Korea, and Singapore.
AWS services are trusted by more than a million active customers around
the world -- including the fastest growing startups, largest
enterprises, and leading government agencies -- to power their
infrastructure, make them more agile, and lower costs. To learn more
about AWS, visit http://aws.amazon.com.

About Amazon

Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is
guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor
focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and
long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized
recommendations, Prime, Fulfillment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct
Publishing, Kindle, Fire tablets, Fire TV, Amazon Echo, and Alexa are
some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon.